Growth continues for 'Outside the Box' homeschool group

Wednesday

Feb 13, 2013 at 11:21 AM

SOMERSET — Somerset's Outside the Box Homeschoolers' Stay & Play group is growing by leaps and bounds. The group started with just two families in September of 2012 with an idea to keep their homeschool students active. Just five short months later, they have at least 10 students who regularly attend to play tabletop games and make art projects.

SOMERSET — Somerset's Outside the Box Homeschoolers' Stay & Play group is growing by leaps and bounds. The group started with just two families in September of 2012 with an idea to keep their homeschool students active. Just five short months later, they have at least 10 students who regularly attend to play tabletop games and make art projects.

The space at the Old Town Hall on Route 138 has been provided free of charge courtesy of the Somerset Public Library and the group provides art activities and tabletop games to homeschool families in Somerset and the surrounding areas. The students who are kindergarten aged enjoy more free-form activities, like playing with cars and Legos, while the tween and teen-aged students take each other on in strategy games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. All kinds of traditional games are also made available for the children, like Monopoly and Battleship.

Krysten Callina and Allie Gillies, founders of the group, are now working with the other moms to come up with ideas for a once-weekly summer curriculum that would appeal to both homeschoolers and public-schoolers while the Old Town Hall is being used by the Recreation Commission's summer program. The group will use project based ideas that the every child can participate in to learn about geography, history, art, photography, literature and writing, using things like Waymarking.com and PetPals projects.

In the meantime, there is still room for more families to join them at the Old Town Hall at 1458 County St. in Somerset, next to the Somerset Public Library on Tuesdays from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. It is free to participate for all school aged students. For more information, see their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OutsideTheBoxHomeschoolers or their blog at http://outsidetheboxhomeschoolers.wordpress.com/. Parents can contact Krysten and Allie by email at outsidetheboxhomeschoolers@gmail.com or by calling (508)916-2187.